The American mother held hostage by the Taliban has spoken out about being beaten and raped as she tried to protect her children in captivity.

Caitlan Coleman Boyle, from Pennsylvania, was captured with her Canadian husband, Joshua Boyle, in Afghanistan in 2012 and held for five years by the Haqqani network.

They were rescued by Pakistani forces last month, with Boyle revealing shortly afterwards that his 31-year-old wife had been raped by their captors and had a “forced abortion” of one child.

Coleman, who was pregnant at the time of the abduction, had three children while imprisoned and told ABC in her first television interview that she struggled to protect them from guards, who beat her eldest son with a stick.

Caitlan Coleman Boyle spoke to ABC about her struggle to protect her children while in captivity.

(ABC News)

“Some of the guards actively hated children and would somewhat target Najaeshi Jonah, trying to come up with reasons to hit him,” she said.

Boyle noted that she was also hit while standing up for her kids, who are now 4, 2, and less than a year old, with her husband saying that she once broke her hand as she punched a captor.

She added that she believes that hormones added to her food resulted in the miscarriage of a fourth child, and she was raped by “animal” guards after she tried to tell their superiors about their actions.

The couple had three children in captivity, including an infant born earlier this year.

(HANDOUT/REUTERS)

It is not immediately clear what led to the release of the family. They are now back in Canada, where they are trying to deal with their past trauma and adjust to freedom.

Joshua Boyle, who was formerly married to the Canadian daughter of a suspected Al Qaeda member, did not answer questions from ABC about why he was in Afghanistan.

He has previously said he was there in order to help poor Afghans and denied any designs on becoming a combatant in the insurgency, adding in his recent interview that “war tends to bring out the worst in everybody.”

The family believes that the miscarriage was forced because the husband did not agree to work with the Haqqani network.